Venture capital investor and Coinbase CTO, Balaji Srinivasan believes cryptocurrency is quickly entering the technology mainstream.
“Sundar Pichai & Sergey Brin’s sons are both mining crypto; Facebook is doing blockchain; Square open sourced some nice cold storage code; Microsoft, Amazon, Google Cloud all have blockchain efforts; crypto is entering the tech mainstream,” he notes, as quoted by CCN.
Increasing Awareness of Blockchain
In just one more example of the blockchain’s entrance into the mainstream, the son of Google co-founder Sundar Pichai is mining Ether (ETH).
Pichai elaborated, “I had [to] explain to him how paper money actually works. I realized he understood Ethereum better than how paper money works”. While this news doesn’t exactly break new ground, it just goes to show how crypto and blockchain are growing.
Three ways crypto is emerging in the mainstream according to Coinbase: as an investment, as a payment method, and as a technology
And there are plenty of examples for all three as they’re being used by major corporations.
As for investing, many exchanges now offer more traditional brokerage services, including futures and custodies. The popular exchange Coinbase recently gained a Qualified Custodian status, further opening the door for its services. In face, this exchange was also recently valuated at $8 billion. According to the Global Blockchain Technology Market report, we can expect a total revenue of $19.9 billion by 2023.
And as for scalability, and transaction speed and cost, coins like Stellar (XLM) and Ripple (XRP) have brought major improvements. Western Union, MoneyGram, and PNC Bank adopted the latter for its ultra quick, cross-border transactions.
Even Bank of America recognizes the eminent growth of blockchain technology
As the second largest bank in the U.S., it has a lot to lose if crypto ever eliminates fiat. But they have more patents for blockchain than any other company in the world.
Granted, they’re not yet using any, but they’re taking precautions for now. Likewise, JP Morgan’s CIO has said that blockchain will soon “replace existing technology”. And the bank is developing Quorum, its own Ethereum-based protocol.
Credit card purchases of crypto banned
Meanwhile, BoA banned the purchase of crypto with their credit cards, and the head of JP Morgan once called crypto a “fraud”. But they’re shrewd, and they don’t want to fall behind as blockchain becomes the next big thing. The very acknowledgment by such giant companies of words like “cryptocurrency” and “blockchain” helps to bring them into the mainstream.
Undoubtedly, blockchain also facilitates considerable improvement in supply chains. The IBM Food Trust is one example. Walmart now requires incoming lettuce to comply with this supply chain system, and they report that tracking requires only a fraction of the time than it did before.
Therefore, in the view of the Coinbase CTO, cryptocurrency and blockchain technology is ready to take off exponentially. No amount of denial and sticking your head in the sand will change this.
